An old
classmate recently tagged me on a group photo on Facebook. It was an old
picture that was taken when we were in college many years ago. Out of excitement
and more out of curiosity, I decided to view the profile of all my classmates
who were tagged in the picture. My concern ranged from what they currently
looked like to how their life had turned out. Have the ones who were really
exceptional in school turned out to become the most successful in life?
Back in
college we had students who were top performers. They were the A students and the
envy of all at every prize-giving day. The rest of us would sit back and watch
them as they collected award after award. They were hailed as the stars of the
future and they were treated specially because of their brilliance. And by
every standard they were successful at that level and got all the attention
they deserved.
As I
clicked on each and every person, I was surprised to see that not every person turned
out as was expected. Remarkably, passing examinations were no longer the basis
for distinguishing between success and failure. That day, I learnt the incredible
lesson that intelligence has little or no survival value. The measurement of
success is not based on intelligence. In a layman’s language, a high IQ doesn’t
translate to a high net worth.
They
always say life is a jungle and only the strong will succeed but the harsh
reality of life is that successful people aren't always the most hardworking;
sometimes they are not the smartest, but more often than not they are simply
the luckiest. Luck and timing play a major role in the success story of most
people.
Life has
become a monopoly where those who are not successful become invisible paving
way for all the attention to be focused on the successful and completely
forgetting the unsuccessful. But should we neglect people just because they do
not simply meet our criteria of success?
A female acquaintance
once asked me “When is your blog going to be like Linda Ikeji’s blog”? I knew
where she was going, so I replied sarcastically “When people like you are able
to read anything apart from gossip”. Every blogger in Nigeria will always be
measured with Linda Ikeji and other successful blogs. Because the basis of gauging
success in our society has a lot more to do with the material value than potential value. So it's easy to look at Linda
Ikeji and think that other bloggers are not hard working or popular. Herein lies
what we call the survivorship bias.
According
to Wikipedia, survivorship bias is the logical error of concentrating
on the people or things that "survived" some process and
inadvertently overlooking those that did not because of their lack of
visibility. This can lead to false conclusions in several different ways.
Those who
survive are highly celebrated but you don’t get to hear of the people that
don’t survive. Survival is very satisfying but it is high time we also
celebrate those who by our standard are still struggling to survive. I have
been blogging for over three years now. I am not getting all the buzz and bucks
at the moment but I know where am headed. I might not be very popular now but I
will survive and be celebrated.
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